United is testing food upgrades at its lounges, like a lobster roll at Boston. (Image: United)

In airport news, United is testing enhanced food service at four of its airport lounges; Delta, American and JetBlue are moving operations at New York LaGuardia; shared-use lounges expand at Boston Logan and move at Pittsburgh; Cleveland makes bag checking easier; and automated TSA lanes come to Dallas/Ft. Worth.

Forbes reports that United Airlines has started market-testing a big upgrade to the food service at a handful of its United Club airport lounges. The testing is going on in United Clubs at Boston, Orlando, Las Vegas and Houston Bush Intercontinental, Forbes said. Besides introducing regional favorites like New England lobster rolls and Boston cream pies at Logan, the airline is adding new hot breakfast items, soups, salads and a “Mediterranean board,” the article reported.

LaGuardia’s Marine Air Terminal is a short ride from the Central Terminal. (Image: LaGuardia Airport)

With all that construction going on during the massive rehabilitation of New York LaGuardia’s passenger terminals, Delta, American and JetBlue are shifting their operations there. Delta said that as of December 9, it is taking its Delta Shuttle flights to Chicago and Washingtonout of the Marine Air Terminal and moving them to Terminal C, where its LGA-Boston shuttles already operate. American said that by December 9, it will consolidate its LGA operations in Terminal B (the Central Terminal). “Since December 2013, (American’s) flights have been split between Terminals B and C. This consolidated operation means all customers will check in at Terminal B and American will operate flights from each of the terminal’s four concourses,” a spokesman said.

JetBlue, meanwhile, has decided to pull up stakes and move from the Central Terminal to the airport’s historic Marine Air Terminal. The art deco terminal opened in 1940, and during its history it has served as a seaplane terminal, a base for Northeast Corridor shuttle flights, and a facility for private jets. JetBlue has several flights a day between LGA and Boston, as well as non-stop service from LGA to Orlando, Ft. Lauderdale and West Palm Beach, Fla. The airline said it should be in place at the new facility before the holidays in December, occupying four gates there. Most of JetBlue’s New York flights are at JFK Airport.

Airport Lounge Development, which operates lounges open to any passenger on a fee basis, has some news at Boston Logan and at Pittsburgh. The company said its Boston Club in Terminal E has just finished an extensive expansion, and now occupies more than 3,500 square feet with seating for 82. It also added new restrooms and shower facilities, new furniture and an enhanced food menu. (Besides The Club in Terminal E, the company also operates The Lounge in Boston’s Terminal C.) At Pittsburgh, meanwhile, The Club has shifted from a temporary location on Concourse C to a permanent one, also on Concourse C just off the Center Core. The temporary site started accepting guests in June. Day passes at both clubs cost $40.

Airport Lounge Development now has 17 locations open to all on a day pass basis. (Image: Airport Lounge Development)

The struggle may soon end for many passengers at Cleveland Hopkins, who have been required to lug their checked luggage after check-in to a separate TSA bag screening drop-off location. The airport this week started live testing of a new in-line baggage screening system on the south end of the ticketing lobby that will eliminate that step for passengers of United, JetBlue, Southwest and Air Canada. Previously, only United had an in-line baggage system at CLE. “If all system testing is successfully completed by mid-November, the free-standing bag security screening machines on the south end of the ticketing level will be removed by the busy Thanksgiving holiday weekend,”the airport said.

The latest major airport to get some of those new automated TSA screening lanes is Dallas/Ft. Worth, which has added four of them at checkpoints in Terminals A and D (checkpoints A21 and D22). Up to five travelers at a time can load their belongings into bins; items needing extra screening are shunted off to a separate conveyor belt so they won’t slow things down, and empty bins are sent back to the start via a separate automated belt to free up TSA officers from carrying them. Bins are 25 percent larger than before, and RFID tags are on each bin, “matching travelers to their property as they move throughout the security screening process,” DFW said. Over time, DFW expects to install 10 of the automated checkpoint lanes throughout the airport.

In airport news, American Airlines opens a big new lounge at Chicago O’Hare; Los Angeles International travelers can now use an app to speed up re-entry after international trips; Pittsburgh International will get a massive makeover; Minneapolis-St. Paul gets faster TSA screening lanes; and facial-recognition boarding is a hit with JetBlue passengers at Boston.

At Chicago O’Hare, American Airlines has cut the ribbon on its second new Flagship Lounge; the first was opened at New York JFK some months ago. At ORD, the lounge is in Terminal 3, in the crosswalk between Gates H6 and K6. Hours are 5 a.m. to 10 p.m. daily. Targeted for AA’s international travelers at its primary gateway airports, the 17,000 square foot O’Hare Flagship Lounge is open to qualifying first and business class passengers, AAdvantage Executive Platinums, Platinums and Platinum Pros; AAdvantage ConciergeKey members; and Oneworld Emerald and Sapphire travelers. American said it expects to open additional Flagship Lounges before year’s end at Los Angeles International and Miami International, and in 2018 at Dallas/Ft. Worth, Philadelphia and London Heathrow. The O’Hare lounge can handle up to 300 passengers. It has showers, “quiet rooms,” a self-service wine bar, create-your-own cocktail service, hot and cold buffets and a chef to prepare customized offerings.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s Mobile Passport Control app is now available for travelers going through Customs at Los Angeles International’s Tom Bradley International Terminal as well as Terminals 2, 4 and 7, airport officials announced. Available free at the Apple App Store and Google Play Store, the app lets passengers create a profile and submit passport information and answers to CBP inspection questions via their smartphone or tablet. The app will then send users a receipt and an encrypted bar code to show to CBP agents at the airport. LAX is a little slow in rolling out the CBP Mobile Passport Control app – 22 other airports have already done so.

Rendering of the spacious atrium planned for Pittsburgh’s new landside building. (Image: Pittsburgh International Airport)

Pennsylvania’s Allegheny County Airport Authority has unveiled a major redevelopment plan that calls for construction of a new landside building for Pittsburgh International’s Midfield Terminal and scaling back the terminal’s number of gates from 75 to 51. Besides new security, ticketing and baggage facilities in the $784 million landside building – which would be between the airside C and D concourses – the project also includes an overhauled international arrivals area, 3,000-space parking garage and other improvements. The X-shaped Midfield Terminal was built 25 years ago to serve as a hub facility for US Airways, but since the carrier downsized that operation and then was merged into American, the terminal now handles less than half the traffic that it once did. The terminal was built to accommodate up to 32 million passengers a year, but it currently handles only 8.3 million; the new facility’s capacity would be 18 million. The $1.1 billion plan calls for razing the existing landside building and the people-mover that carriers travelers from that building to the airside concourses. Construction is planned for 2019 to 2023.

Minneapolis-St. Paul is the latest airport to install those new automated security lanes that are said to speed up the TSA screening process by as much as 30 percent. (Although we’ve heard from many frequent travelers who would disagree with that assessment.) MSP now has four of the new lanes at the Terminal 1 south checkpoint, and will expand them to the north checkpoint next year. The lanes allow several travelers to load their belongings into bins simultaneously; the bins are larger than before, and if a bag raises the concerns of the TSA agent manning the x-ray machine, it can be shuttled off on a separate conveyor belt for further examination without slowing down everyone else. Empty bins are sent back to the starting point by a separate conveyor belt, freeing up TSA agents for inspection duties.

Some months ago, we reported on JetBlue starting to test facial recognition technology for passenger boarding at its Boston Logan hub. Instead of having to show a boarding pass, passport or anything else to the gate agent, passengers simply stand in front of a camera and proceed on board. After four months, SITA — the technology company that provided the new system — said its biometric scanning proved to be quite accurate in the tests, with a success rate of almost 100 percent matching passengers’ facial images to those in government databases to verify identity. The company said a majority of JetBlue passengers on the airline’s Boston to Aruba flights used the camera option to board.

CLEAR lanes will soon be available in 22 U.S. airports. (Image: CLEAR)

The CLEAR trusted traveler program, which provides members with expedited access to TSA security checkpoints, is embarking on a big national expansion.

CLEAR said it added a presence at New York JFK a few weeks ago, and will do the same at New York LaGuardia today (January 25). It will then add lanes at Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson later this month, followed by Minneapolis-St. Paul and Los Angeles International later in the first quarter.

Are you noticing a pattern here? Last year Delta made an investment in the company, which refocused expansion efforts at Delta hubs. See CLEAR gets second wind.

At New York JFK, special lane are now available in Delta’s Terminal 2, and at LaGuardia in Delta’s Terminal D, with more locations coming at both airports, the company said. At Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson, the lane will be in Delta’s South Terminal. It will also be in MSP’s South Terminal, and locations at LAX will be announced soon– but at least one (if not the only) location will be Delta’s Terminal 5.

The new airport locations will give the company a presence in 22 airports around the country, “covering the majority of flights in the U.S.,” the company noted. In the past year, it added locations at Detroit Metro, Seattle-Tacoma, Washington Dulles and Washington Reagan National.

But it’s important to note that while CLEAR is available at 22 airports, it’s NOT available at all entry points at those airports. And CLEAR lanes are not always open. So even if you are flying Delta, you should probably check to find out exactly where the lanes are located and when they are open.

CLEAR uses kiosks with biometric technology – fingerprint and iris scans — to verify the identity of its members at airport security checkpoints, and allows them to bypass the long lines that other travelers often encounter. (This is separate from TSA’s PreCheck program, and does not provide access to PreCheck lanes unless the member is also a participant in PreCheck.)

Membership costs $179 a year, although discounts are available to members of Delta’s SkyMiles program, varying by elite levels. Delta last year acquired a minority stake in the company and has supported its expansion to airports where the carrier has a hub or a major presence. New members who sign up at the airport will get a one-month free trial and can start using it right away. Read: How to get the Delta Discount at CLEAR

In addition to the airports mentioned above, lanes are also available at San Francisco, San Jose, Denver, Dallas/Ft. Worth, Houston Bush Intercontinental, Houston Hobby, San Antonio, Austin, Orlando, Miami, Las Vegas, Baltimore-Washington, Seattle and New York’s Westchester County Airport.

Those new, speedier, more automated TSA airport security screening lines are proliferating quickly: This week new lanes opened at Chicago O’Hare for both United and American Airlines customers — including the first one exclusively for PreCheck members. And more lanes are coming to airports Dallas Ft Worth and Atlanta as well.

United said it has opened a “fully redesigned” TSA PreCheck security checkpoint for its Terminal 1 base at Chicago O’Hare, with one of the new automated checkpoints for PreCheck travelers and two others for regular screening. At the same time, American Airlines said it now has two of the faster screening lanes in operation at its Terminal 3 at O’Hare.

Similar to the new lanes that opened earlier this year at Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson and more recently at Los Angeles International, the new facilities allow up to five passengers at a time to load their carry-on belongings into plastic bins, and automatically draw bags into the x-ray device instead of requiring passengers to push them. They also have an automatic return conveyor belt to bring empty bins back to the beginning of the line, and a secondary screening belt for bags that need an extra inspection, so that they won’t hold up the line. The bins are also 25 percent larger than before.

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel said the new lanes are helping O’Hare to eliminate security bottlenecks that hampered its operations. “Earlier this year, wait times at (O’Hare’s) TSA checkpoints escalated to an unacceptable 104 minutes,” he said. “Working together with our federal and airline partners, we resolved this crisis and today have average wait times that are among the shortest of major airports in the country.”

Another fast screening lane is being built at Atlanta Hartsfield-Jackson. (Image: Delta)

Last month, United opened a pair of the faster screening lanes in its Terminal 7 at Los Angeles International Airport. And earlier in the year the concept was first introduced by Delta and TSA at Atlanta Hartsfield Jackson. Speaking of ATL, another new automated TSA lane is now being constructed at the South security checkpoint, according to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution – although this project will not require the checkpoint to be shut down as it was last spring when the first two lanes were installed there.

Meanwhile, the board that governs Dallas/Ft. Worth International this week is expected to approve a $3.5 million expenditure to install 10 of the faster screening lanes around the airport, in Terminals A, D and E. The plan calls for two machines each at checkpoints near Gates A21, D18, D22, D30 and E18, according to the Ft. Worth Star-Telegram. The work is expected to be finished by next spring.

United is also working on an overhaul of security screening at its Newark hub, where it is consolidating four checkpoints into one centralized facility. American said it expects to add the new lanes early next year at Los Angeles, Miami and New York JFK as well.

Readers: Have you had a chance to try these new automated screening lanes yet? What did you think?

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